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Forum:To sub-page or not to sub-page
It seems that the topic of sub pages have been coming up. On several users pages, different decisions have been made on weather to form subpages or not, weather they should be standing articles or children of the main article. Wookieepedia has had this discussion as well recently, so I thought it would be a good time to let our community decide on what should be it's recommended format. I personally am a fan of sub pages. They have a hierarchical feel and they just look a lot cleaner. --ImperialFH 07:46, 31 March 2007 (UTC) * I prefer subpages. -- Xerxes 12:47, 31 March 2007 (UTC) *I don't mind them, but I don't want to see things get all wordy. There's an art to writing a succinct article about a character, event, or object — finding that balance between too brief and too much. I'm not an expert, but that's what I shoot for in my articles. I don't care to read to how so-and-so felt when they stepped on such-and-such planet. I just see sub-pages as being... well... harbors and encouragements for wordiness. When I made the Template:Tab Return function, I had this sort of stratification in mind. Seems that Xerxes knows more of this than I do, though. I have half a mind to go through and attach the stat sheets for the various ships onto their parents as sub-pages instead of separate articles. Will have to do some testing as to how the categorization of sub-pages works. -- Hawke / Rtufo 16:17, 31 March 2007 (UTC) * In terms of pure Wiki mechanics (edit buffer limits) I don't mind sub-pages where absolutely necessary. But it seems to me that more pages are more work to maintain than one page would be. Also, from a usability standpoint, sub-pages also make a reader do more clicks to see all of a page's content, and at some point, a reader won't want to bother. Another usability issue with long pages (whether sub-paged or not) is if the table of contents takes up too much of the first screenful. We've run into this on the Roleplay Logs page. I agree with Tuf about wordiness. Looking at page lengths in general, I would ask page authors this question: If there are pages that are so long that you don't want to read the whole thing, why would someone else want to read your equally long page? --Lolkje 17:37, 31 March 2007 (UTC) * Let me clarify my position. I agree with previous comments that there is a point at which articles need to be broken apart for readability and good organization. I'm not advocating subpages be used ALL the time. My preference is that, when the decision IS made to break a larger article apart, we use subpages (Xerxes/Background) rather than separate articles (Xerxes's Background). No doubt there will still be instances when a separate article is best, but when an article is clearly subordinate to another I say go with a subpage. -- Xerxes 18:37, 31 March 2007 (UTC) * I like to use subpages, as it gives me a place to put additional content while keeping the main page clean. If anyone wants to read my page for example I give them the main page, if they care to look into anything further, there are the subpages. -- Nasa eagle 19:12, 31 March 2007 (UTC) * Some of us, myself included, may not like when a player writes a huge, detailed article about themselves. However, that may ultimately be the user's prerogative. This is the unique challenge that this wiki faces over others. If I'm going to write an article about Phil Collins on wikipedia, I'm simply researching and reporting on factual information. But if I'm going to write an article on Korynn Fleming, I am the originator of 80% of the content and as it stands now, I can write, editorialize, and expound as much as I'd like. The debate here is whether we give contributors ultimate freedom on length, or if we enforce some method of compounding information for the sake of visitors' sanities. We would either need to make and enforce a policy on how long character pages can be, or we will just have to use sub-pages. Either way, I think something has to give. If we make a policy, then contributors will have no right to complain if we go cutting down their articles. But if not, then we can create a general format for how subpages will be named, as Xerxes suggested, and enforce that policy instead. Either way, we're solving the problem of having a visitor show up and look at any given huge page and going "Egads! 30 page scrolls! WTF!?" --SW1 Kyle 13:25, 2 April 2007 (UTC) **personally I don't have a problem with someone who wants to expand every minute detail of their existance. What happened in-game or background information, however I do feel as I have pointed out on some user pages that it should be behind subpages or child articles leaving the main article about a subject should be informative but also be able to be read in one session. --ImperialFH 15:16, 2 April 2007 (UTC) **Yep. Limiting content is something I doubt anyone really wants to see happen. Sub-pages are undoubtedly the way to go. -- SW1 Kyle 16:49, 2 April 2007 (UTC) ***I'll reiterate from earlier. I fail to see the big difference between a subpage and a subsection. Now hear me out. In the case of a subpage, you have the main article with provides a basic summary of the character and links to subpages that elaborate on those given sections of the character's life. In the case of the subsection, as my article is laid out, the first few paragraphs serve as the basic summary of the character. That's really all that has to be read to get a basic gist of the character, as the summary on an article that has subpages. No one has to read any further to understand the basics of the character unless they choose to, as the case with an article that is subpaged and the case with my article. Now, in the case of the subpaged article, if a user wishes to look further into the character history, they're treated to links to parts of the character's life that elaborate. In the case of my article, you're also treated to links that are listed in chronological order that send the user to the given section. If the user wanted to read into Danik's career during the Blitzkrieg, they'd click on the "Blitzkrieg" link. If they want to go back, they click the back button to go back to the table of contents to choose another section. It's pretty much the same exact thing as a subpage - the only difference is that there aren't a bunch of different subpages, it's all placed on the main article. They're both easy to use - you have a list of links to get to what you want, and they're all broken down in a nice, chronological order. No other Wiki uses subpages because it's wholly unnecessary when you have the vaunted table of contents, which effectively neutralizes the need for scrolling through large articles and provides the same mechanics as a subpage would - a link to get to a section of a character's article rather than scanning through the entire article for what you want. If you want to be bothered with a character's extremely long article, then you just read the basic summary provided at the top - which requires no scrolling whatsoever. And for those who are interested and want to read more, the table of contents paves the way, just as subpage links would. --Danik Kreldin 18:05, 2 April 2007 (UTC) ****Subpages look clean and organized, they give the content a hierarchy, having subsections makes the whole page look messy and unorganized, when your table of contents is over a page long, the article needs some serious work, either paring it down or breaking it into pages that that better organize the work. Wookie may not do it, but I don't contribute there and have no desire to. This is the Wiki I contribute on and the only one I am likely to ever contribute on. Long pages are a mess and need to be cleaned up, the most efficient way to do that is to send content off to subpages. They make logical sense and creatively they look 100% better. When I can sit down and read the main page for a topic in one sitting, I like that. A person shouldn't have to spend more than 10-15 minutes reading a page on a subject to go from top to bottom of the article. If you want to drawn them in the minutae then subpages leave that option open to someone who wants to pursue it, if I want to dig into information, I have no problem with clicking on links to drill down deeper into a topic. Check out the comments section on your page for some suggestions on how to better break down your page Danik, hierarchically speaking it brings everything together in an organized way that makes an article more than just a puff piece by the author but something that is useful to the community. --ImperialFH 19:15, 2 April 2007 (UTC) *****Just because you think it looks "neater" and "hierarchically" doesn't mean it is the truth... I happen to disagree, very much so. A user doesn't have to spend more than 10-15 minutes reading a page because all they have to do is read the summary at the top and then use the table of contents to navigate to where ever they want to go from there. If all they wanted was the summary, then they're free to go. --Danik Kreldin 19:22, 2 April 2007 (UTC) ******I am not the only one that thinks this way. Lots of our community seem to agree that cumbersome articles do need to be broken up, weather it is be in logical or functional divisions, that subpages are a good way to do that rather than continually bloating an article until it is a complete abomination re: Palpatines article on Wookieepedia. You can disagree, but it won't change the fact that bloated, cumbersome articles are bad and articles that convey information in a concise, usable manner are good. If you want to get wordy, tuck it away on a seperate page where someone wanting to know everything about a subject can go and read it to their heart's content. And no, this is not just about your article, the reason I made the forum was because subpages have been cropping up in several article discussions as many members of the community have been looking at ways at trimming down their articles. It seemed a good time to get discussion started on something that can/will shape our community. --ImperialFH 19:41, 2 April 2007 (UTC) ******Here are good examples of people keeping their articles trim by using subpages. Krieg Inrokana, Jal'Dana Rall, and Arissa Kiiko. What I think needs to be declared is a guideline to how these subpages are used and titled, and such. *Well, you guys are more than welcomed to trim my article and create the subpages as necessary. Feel free. --Danik Kreldin 20:12, 2 April 2007 (UTC) **Why don't you do it yourself, Danik? Everyone else is busy trying to RP on the game and include progression from that here, such as with Krieg's article or the TP Progress page. Why don't you split your massive article down into subpages yourself, and show some respect to the community in that way, just as the community has tried to respect you in spite of what happened on the game? -- SW1 Kyle 20:19, 2 April 2007 (UTC) ***If it becomes a rule that it's required for long articles to be broken down, then I will. As it is now, it isn't. --Danik Kreldin 20:22, 2 April 2007 (UTC) **** Which is why this forum is here, this is not all about your article Danik but in general to decide on community rules on how to handle unwieldy pages. Wookieepedia has their style guides, Wiki has theirs and we shall have ours. --ImperialFH 20:30, 2 April 2007 (UTC) **I must reply to this, and I'm doing so from a neutral standpoint. He doesn't have to do so because he's under no obligation to. I mean, surely, you/we can hope that he's going to, but he's like any other former player who puts up an article on here... he's going to put up stuff and it's up to us, the community, to shape and mold the material to suit the community. Now, granted, being that he is an admin, he (Danik) might understand the responsibility he has, but we shouldn't count on it, because that's not fair to him. See, there's several instances of duality and contradictory sentiment here — We want to build our own little (or big) articles, and damnation-to-all who even try to edit them to conform to a community-wide standard (one or two users in particular come to my mind)... yet, we (the community) are starting to "strongly imply" that all articles should conform to a standard, or set of standards, and that you (the contributor) should do the (bulk of the) work? -- Hawke / Rtufo 20:32, 2 April 2007 (UTC) *** I think I'm with Hawke on this one, as this goes back to the whole article ownership issue. I feel that once an article is up on the wiki, it is owned by the community not the individual. We, collectively, are responsible for content accuracy and improvement. (There might be relevant connections to the the other Review and Rating post that deals with how to improve articles.) -- Xerxes 20:58, 2 April 2007 (UTC) *** I'm with Hawke too. My point goes back to this - if the community wants something, then the only way for us to enforce it is to decide on a format, make it official, and use it. I do feel that the original contributors of a character page should be responsible for breaking up their own articles if a format is declared, simply because they know it best and should have the honor of doing it themselves to meet their satisfaction. -- SW1 Kyle 13:06, 3 April 2007 (UTC) * If the question remains: Should we ever break-up articles into subsidiary articles? My answer would be yes. I feel that this would be classified as article improvement, subject to community standards and guidelines. As I see it, the true decision to be made isn't DO we ever create subsidiary articles, rather it's a question of WHEN do we create subsidiary articles. I would recommend, as ImpFH has, that we base our guidelines on the manuals of style from other more established wikis. Does someone want to take a shot at converting the style guidelines from Wikipedia (linked below) into versions for us? -- Xerxes 21:12, 2 April 2007 (UTC) :-I am working on a style guide similar to what Wikipedia has but I am not sure on all of the formatting, I will throw it up as a subpage of the forum probably today or tomorrow. --ImperialFH 13:27, 5 April 2007 (UTC) Wikipedia notes Wikipedia has extensive notes on content branching, subpaging as well as examples of pages that have been broken down. A good article to show breaking up content at work is Wikipedia:George W. Bush. Pages on his early life and such have been made into branches where readers looking for specific information can go. Wiki itself offers up Wikipedia:Summary style and Wikipedia:Article size. These are guidelines established by the Wiki community and while we are not bound to them, they seem to make good sense and should be considered for use here. Take note of the examples given for WWII on the Summary Style page as well as the breakdowns on GWB's page. --ImperialFH 20:06, 2 April 2007 (UTC) *It would seem that Wikipedia recommends NOT using subpages (with a slash '/') in the Main namespace as subsidiary articles. So, repeating my example from above, they would use Xerxes's Background instead of Xerxes/Background. -- Xerxes 20:50, 2 April 2007 (UTC) **Though we are free to do as we choose, depending on the decisions of the community as to the standards we would like to see, if subpages are chosen over subarticles then that is our communities choice, as we currently have pages of both flavors, I am not caught up on either over the other, but that long articles need to be broken down is a very good idea, I think. --ImperialFH 20:59, 2 April 2007 (UTC) **I think Wikipedia's policy on "no subpages" is based on a much larger model. With millions of pages, and then scores of sub-pages, maintenance, interlinking, categorization, etc. can get _really_ messy. Since we don't have many automated systems here (or bots), and such a smaller user range, I don't think we'd have much of a problem with sub-pages for specific instances (such as overtly large backgrounds). In fact, I favor the idea of stat sheets as sub-pages — it makes completely logical sense to structure them that way. I'll leave the Tab Return template in place (parent-child), and even go so far as to make it easier to implement. Sub-pages, and the parent-child templates I made, both address the same issue — keeping things the h3ll organized. Yeesh. -- Hawke / Rtufo 21:27, 2 April 2007 (UTC) ** I've become a big fan of the PAGE/SUBPAGE format simply because it offers a quick, inobtrusive back-link at the top of the article automatically, and that to me is intrinsic as far as style and ease of use goes. -- SW1 Kyle 13:08, 3 April 2007 (UTC)